Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Today is a good day for trade. It's a good day for trade because the coalition, the Liberal and National parties, have delivered on our vision of making sure that we are driving economic growth in this country and driving jobs in this country.

We believe, as Liberals and Nationals together, in the benefits to all Australians of free trade. We believe in creating more economic opportunity for small businesses and we believe in backing-in those small businesses. We, as Liberals and Nationals, fundamentally understand that trade is good news for Australian workers and good news for Australian exporters. That is the reason why, as a government, we have been so deeply committed to opening up trade agreements. In fact, since 2013, the Liberal and National parties have opened and concluded eight free trade agreements, including the North Asian FTAs with China, Japan and Korea; the comprehensive update that took place with Singapore; PACER Plus; the Peru-Australia Free Trade Agreement; the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which we delivered; and, of course, the TPP-11.

But I've got to throw a flower towards Labor—one flower—and that is for the fact that Labor did support the enabling legislation in the Senate. But I have to say that when it comes to trade we really don't know what Labor believes at all. Fundamentally, the Australian Labor Party on trade is a complete house of cards. Should Bill Shorten ever become the Prime Minister—

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